Claude Rains was my favorite actor as a kid, and he may still be, and I clearly recall seeing this film when I was about 10 or 11 (1949/1950) and never having heard of it before, probably because it came out the same year I started going to movies by myself (yes, in those days one could go to a movie by himself - especially Saturday or Sunday afternoon Westerns and the like - when he was seven!) and maybe I missed its original release by a few months. Anyway, I loved it then, and I still do. I had never heard of Paul Muni at that time as this was the only film he had made after the war, and had to go home and have Mom tell me all about him.
Anyway, the picture is what it is, a delightful fantasy which gives ample opportunity for its three stars to strut their stuff, but I am commenting here more on other reviewer impressions than on the film itself.
1. Several mention in their reviews that Muni was associated with gangster films. He was not! Prior to this outing, the only film in which he ever played a gangster - or even the bad guy - was SCARFACE.
2. Several mention his penchant for ham or overacting, but I would love for any one of them to tell me exactly in which films such exaggeration takes place. If anything, he may have been the under-actor of his time, at least among the really great star character actors. (For the first half of the century, I would nominate as America's greatest star character actors Walter Huston, Spencer Tracy, Fredric March, John Barrymore and Paul Muni, in any order you like, all of whom also played occasional leading man parts.)
3. More than one has called him forgotten. Actually, amongst knowledgeable people he is no such thing, but if I were to base greatness on not being forgotten, then Marilyn Monroe would be the greatest actress of all time, and she certainly wasn't.
4. One or two mention his various accents for his myriad biographical portrayals, but he almost never put on an accent, and certainly not as Pasteur, Zola or Juarez; at most, his speaking cadence changed for those roles, but no accent, not even for Wang Lung in THE GOOD EARTH (who, if you can believe it, was played by Claude Rains on Broadway). He did put on a French one for Radisson in HUDSON'S BAY and something of a semi-East European accent for Radek in BLACK FURY, but that was about it.
5. He appeared in less than two dozen films, mainly because he was the kind of 'legitimate' actor who kept running back to Broadway for stage work.
6. Some question his appearance as a leading man next to Anne Baxter, what with his Simian features! Well, to these eyes, he certainly looks as good as, or better than, Humphrey Bogart (and he is certainly better and more powerfully built), and no one ever questions how, say, Audrey Hepburn could fall for him in SABRINA. (Muni also created the KEY LARGO role on Broadway that Bogart would play on the screen.)
7. While on the age question, Muni was 51 here and Anne Baxter only 23, yet to me this doesn't seem to pose anything like the believability problem posed by the Bogart-Hepburn situation mentioned above. Muni could be anywhere from his late thirties up as Eddie Kagle, and Baxter really does come over as a lot older than 23, simply because she exudes the kind of maturity of style and presence that so many of the classic film actresses of those days possessed - think of the roles Garbo, Loy, Davis, Hobson and Hepburn played while still in their twenties (Hobson, in THE WEREWOLF OF LONDON and THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, was 18!).
7. No one seems to have touched on this, but It might also be mentioned that Paul Muni's normal speaking voice, probably best heard as Pasteur or Zola, was extremely cultured, unaccented, and downright classy (as was Edward G. Robinson's), yet he never acted in the English language until he was 31 years of age. I find that fact amazing!
8. Although he was an actor with the Yiddish Art Theater until 30, and proud of it, he refused to be cast as an overtly Jewish character in his films - perhaps fearing some kind of typecasting - and the only overtly Jewish character he ever played was in his final film, THE LAST ANGRY MAN.
As one would expect, Claude Rains is Muni's equal every step of the way in this film, even if his role is probably a lot easier than Muni's, but for me Muni manages to steal the film in his very last scene with Baxter, when he is trying to say goodbye and wants to say more, but can't, and simply expresses this final frustration by an incredibly delicate and moving use of his hands as he turns away from her. You have to be a great actor to make something like that "tell", and I think it has to be intuitive, not practiced or the result of any kind of training or directorial suggestion.
Anne Baxter was often an actress who could seem to be overacting while underacting (see her in ALL ABOUT EVE) or wildly overacting while just simply overacting (see THE TEN COMMANDMENTS), but like John Barrymore in a slightly different context, she usually made that work for her (as did the wonderful Eleanor Parker), and most of her performances are fairly memorable. She doesn't do any of that in this film, and in some ways this may be the most natural performance she ever gave onscreen, despite the fact that some of the clothing and hair styles of the day did her no favors.
Finally, a quick look at Onslow Stevens, Muni's doctor in the film, who was a very fine actor who never seemed to be able to break beyond solid supporting roles: This was only one year after he had the best and biggest role of his entire Hollywood career, that of the Mad Doctor in HOUSE OF DRACULA, a not really very good film that he managed to walk away with. He looks about 30 pounds heavier here, but even so, you could never recognize him as that previous year's Dr. Edelman.
Some call this a B film, but I am uncertain about that. To me, it looks more like a small A film, and the leads would certainly support that interpretation. Muni never came cheap, and Rains was just about the highest-paid character actor in the business (see the salary breakdowns for CASABLANCA). Whatever it qualifies as, though, it is surely 100 minutes of pure enjoyment!
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